HENRY STEINER / GRAPHIC DESIGNER / HONG KONG

How can politics encourage creativity and innovation?Governments can’t do more than allow innovation to grow like weeds. Einstein, Steve Jobs and numerous others managed nicely without bureaucratic interference. It would, however, be helpful to have a course on art, architecture and design history in the curricula of secondary schools.

What do you like best about Hong Kong?Hong Kong is on a tectonic fault line where political and cultural systems collide. This makes it the ideal place for a designer concerned with cross-cultural communication.

What should the world know about your work?I learned to analyse problems and communicate visual messages clearly at Yale. I have brought these disciplines to bear on branding projects in Asia for nearly half a century. My most widely recognised creation is the HSBC visual identity.